Wednesday, April 9, 2008

Bloody hell, in my musical sadness, I can't believe I almost forgot to post this!

Christians crusade with the Bible.Muslims jihad with the Qur'an.Mormons serve up golden plates.Devil worshipers spill blood to the works of Anton LaVey.Neocons try and recreate Stalin and Hitler.Scientologists jump like Tom Cruise.I pluck Les Fleurs du Mal.

I appreciate you not rising from the grave and carting your crumbling skeleton across the sea to pummel me with Ali-like efficiency, given how often I've been the flâneur strolling through your pages in my unending search for a whiff of that black magical versification. Hey, if Zep can liberally borrow from the great bluesmen, I don't see what's wrong with me doing the same to you, right? Thanks for not suing, but just to be on the safe side, I highly recommend taking a swim in this river:

I don't think Baudelaire would raise from his eternal slumber and strike a zombie pose if you just plopped this on into Babel Fish and gave us a peak at the English. I'm too lazy to do it, and I was thinking for that you could respect my honesty.

FB, as they say, honestliness is next to godlessness! Here you go, fucked up translation (not that I could do THAT much better, but who doesn't love all the weird stuff this program churns out?) courtesy of babelfish:

Come on my heart, cruel and deaf heart, adored Tigre, monster with the indolent airs; I want to a long time plunge my fingers trembling In the thickness of your mane door; In your underskirts filled with your perfume To bury my head endolorie, And to breathe, like a faded flower, the soft one relent of my late love. I want to sleep! to sleep rather than to live! In a sleep as soft as death, I will spread out my kisses without remorse Over your beautiful body polished as copper. To absorb my alleviated sobs Nothing the abyss of your layer is worth me; The powerful lapse of memory lives on your mouth, And Léthé runs in your kisses. With my destiny, from now on my delight, I will obey like one predestined; Flexible, innocent martyr condemned, Whose enthusiasm pokes the torment, I will suck, to drown my rancour, the népenthès and the good conium With the charming ends of this acute throat Which never imprisoned heart.

mauigirl, Wallace Fowlie's translations are really good as well, especially for those like me who are trying to learn the language since his are direct translations; he doesn't try to make them poetical.

Well, I doubt I'll turn five days in Paris with three 14-year-olds into a cemetery tour. But as I said, we'll be right next to P.L., and I think any teenager must see Jim Morrison's grave. Apparently, though, it's now strictly guarded and is no longer the pot-smoke-filled cult hangout it was the last I saw it in the 1980s. What a pity!